VANCOUVER. September 19th. Vancouver local Natasha Wodak continued her banner year with a win at Saturday’s 3rd annual Vancouver Eastside 10K, a Canada Running Series event. Wodak’s time of 33:04 was enough to break the course record and was awarded an additional $500 for her efforts. Dayna Pidhoresky 
was second with a time of 34:01 and rounding out the field was Kelowna’s Malindi Elmore with a time of 34:32. On the men’s side Geoff Martinson ran a fine solo effort of 29:32 to crush the trailing pack by more than a minute. Calgary’s Trevor Hofbauer was 2nd and Chris Winter 3rd in 30:25 and 30:55, respectively. Defending champion Kelly Wiebe finished a disappointing 4th in 31:18.
Natasha ran a great race maintaining the lead for almost the entire event. “It’s a really fun way to end out my season with a win and a course record is great,” said Natasha. “My plan was to come out strong with the leaders and then I took off at the 2K mark and stayed out in front.”
Natasha
’s win wasn’t the only record broken at today’s event. The fastest growing running event in BC attracted 2,300 competitors and raised over $28,000 in support of the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre, Watari Support and Counselling, the Greater Vancouver Food Bank and the Breakfast Club of Canada. The record fundraising amount was achieved largely because of the efforts of the East Vancouver Run Crew and Fraser Street Run Club who raised $5,300 and $4,700 respectively. Participants can continue to fundraise online until September 28th on line at www.eastside10k.ca
“We were thrilled with the turnout today,” said Canada Running Series president Alan Brookes. “Canada Running Series events build communities through running and the Eastside 10K is a perfect example of people coming together to support their community.”
Information and complete race results can be found at www.eastside10k.ca
